Case: 12-57302, 05/18/2015, ID: 9540348, DktEntry: 197-1, Page 35 of 42
GARCIA V. GOOGLE
35
film—is the only thing that can be a “work.” If this is what
my colleagues are saying, they are casting doubt on the
copyrightability of vast swaths of material created during
production of a film or other composite work.
The implications are daunting. If Garcia’s scene is not a
work, then every take of every scene of, say, Lord of the
Rings is not a work, and thus not protected by copyright,
unless and until the clips become part of the final movie. If
some dastardly crew member were to run off with a copy of
the Battle of Morannon, the dastard would be free to display
it for profit until it was made part of the final movie. And, of
course, the take-outs, the alternative scenes, the special
effects never used, all of those things would be fair game
because none of these things would be “works” under the
majority’s definition. And what about a draft chapter of a
novel? Is there no copyright in the draft chapter unless it gets
included in the published book? Or if part of the draft gets
included, is there no copyright in the rest of it?
This is a remarkable proposition, for which the majority
provides remarkably little authority. Aalmuhammed v. Lee,
202 F.3d 1227 (9th Cir. 2000), the only case that the majority
cites, says just the opposite. In Aalmuhammed, we
considered a claim by a contributor to the movie Malcolm X
that he was a joint author of the entire movie. Id. at 1230.
Everyone in Aalmuhammed agreed that the relevant “work”
was Malcolm X. The only question was whether the
contributor was a joint author of that work. We went out of
our way to emphasize that joint authorship of a movie is a
“different question” from whether a contribution to the movie
can be a “work” under section 102(a). Id. at 1233. And we
clearly stated that a contribution to a movie can be
copyrightable (and thus can be a “work”). Id. at 1232.
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